It Could Lead to Mixed Dancing
Posted on 09/30/2022 @ 06:00 AM
Photo from Silvio Berlfein
What a unique beginning of a new year this has truly been!
Our Early Childhood Education Directors came together IRL (In Real Life) for the first time in years as part of the Jewish Early Childhood Professional Network (JECPN) that CAJE conducts.
And this milestone post-Covid called for a gathering unlike any previously.
Joy Schandler, the CAJE Director of ECE and the co-chairs of the JECPN, Jenny Tettner Gugig, director of Tauber Academy at Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center and Katy Horowitz, director of Gan Katan of the Pardes Day School, wanted a meeting that embraced this new experience of greeting each other in person, rather than on the Zoom screen.
We wanted to greet each other and bask in the laughter of this “Shehecheyanu moment”- this first time our network was getting together in person in 2 ½ years.
Silvio, an expert in building community through group dynamics, guided us in connecting to each other in an open and light-hearted way. We sang, clapped hands, danced, swung each other around and laughed a lot.
This was just what we needed!
It’s exactly what we do all the time and have been doing with the children we teach throughout these past 2 ½ years- building and nurturing a caring learning community through singing, playing and exploring together.
Often, we forget that we adults, we teachers, need this just as must as the children. We need to have opportunities to get out of our heads, stop the thinking and just get silly, laugh and embrace each other.
Perhaps all of our JECPN meetings will start with getting out of our chairs and dancing.
And in case you were worried, since there is only one director of our early childhood programs who is male (Rabbi David Paskin, Temple Sinai) and he was on Zoom, there was, in fact, no mixed dancing (which, if you are not aware, is the punchline of many jokes and a key scene in Fiddler on the Roof).
Thank you to our Early Childhood Directors and Teachers, who nurture our future community members in their schools, and work so hard for all of us!What a unique beginning of a new year this has truly been!
Our Early Childhood Education Directors came together IRL (In Real Life) for the first time in years as part of the Jewish Early Childhood Professional Network (JECPN) that CAJE conducts.
And this milestone post-Covid called for a gathering unlike any previously.
Joy Schandler, the CAJE Director of ECE and the co-chairs of the JECPN, Jenny Tettner Gugig, director of Tauber Academy at Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center and Katy Horowitz, director of Gan Katan of the Pardes Day School, wanted a meeting that embraced this new experience of greeting each other in person, rather than on the Zoom screen.
We wanted to greet each other and bask in the laughter of this “Shehecheyanu moment”- this first time our network was getting together in person in 2 ½ years.
Silvio, an expert in building community through group dynamics, guided us in connecting to each other in an open and light-hearted way. We sang, clapped hands, danced, swung each other around and laughed a lot.
This was just what we needed!
It’s exactly what we do all the time and have been doing with the children we teach throughout these past 2 ½ years- building and nurturing a caring learning community through singing, playing and exploring together.
Often, we forget that we adults, we teachers, need this just as must as the children. We need to have opportunities to get out of our heads, stop the thinking and just get silly, laugh and embrace each other.
Perhaps all of our JECPN meetings will start with getting out of our chairs and dancing.
And in case you were worried, since there is only one director of our early childhood programs who is male (Rabbi David Paskin, Temple Sinai) and he was on Zoom, there was, in fact, no mixed dancing (which, if you are not aware, is the punchline of many jokes and a key scene in Fiddler on the Roof).
Thank you to our Early Childhood Directors and Teachers, who nurture our future community members in their schools, and work so hard for all of us!
